Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 4 · column 3 of 7 · from the scan, no model involved
Being a recent transplant from the hurly-burly of suburbia near Washington, D.C., I am unable to view things with the necessary detachment and imaginative empathy for the various groups that comprise the county. Following many of the arguments at zoning board meetings, the new ordinance debates, the landfill problem, the refusal to approve a rest home and many other problems reported in your newspaper one gets the impression that the main theme running through almost every response by the ruling elite is, “Let’s keep Rappahannock County the way it is.” Of course, to the entrenched powerful of the county this view is the most advantageous. Development brings problems, brings people, higher taxes and spoils the natural beauty with which we are so blessed. Is Rappahannock County in need of a change?
Rappahannock County is the poorest and least populous in the w'hole state of Virginia and getting more so every year. When 75 percent of the work force in the county has to seek employment outside the county, does this call for a change? Most modem economists admit that a high rate of consumption of transportation services between a man’s home and his place of work signifies a misfortune and not a high standard or good quality of life. To satisfy human wants from far away sources rather than from sources nearby signifies failure r.u,ci' than success.
The “joyless riders of the asphalt” are imprisoned for two to three hours of every working day in their speeding cars. They are no better off than the absentee owners who come to Rappahannock on the weekends. They have little time to enjoy the fruits of their alien labor. Work and leisure should be complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure.
Unfortunately, Karl Marx was right when he wrote in 1859 that man was not a free agent. “The general progress of the human mind is rooted in the material conditions of life. Men are not free agents. They contract certain relations independently of their will, even though they think they are acting from choice, voting for their candidate, believing in their creed, or living in their own way.” Our owm Benjamin
92.3%